<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>a place like me doing in a girl like this by rain_sleet_snow</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28614651">a place like me doing in a girl like this</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow'>rain_sleet_snow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mummy (1999)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Developing Relationship, During Canon, F/M, Falling In Love, Female-Centric, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Nerdiness, POV Female Character, Period-Typical Sexism</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:27:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>931</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28614651</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Evy Carnahan spent years looking for someone who'd listen.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Evy Carnahan O'Connell &amp; her mother, Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell, Jonathan Carnahan &amp; Evy Carnahan O'Connell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>158</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a place like me doing in a girl like this</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedpencils/gifts">wickedpencils</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For @avalencias, who wanted an Evy character study!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Many men thought pretty Evy Carnahan worth looking at, but Evy had discovered almost as soon as she was allowed to go out in society that very few of them were interested in listening to her. And the few that did were revolted.</p><p> </p><p>“Burial amulets are so interesting,” she said to her mother. “I truly thought -“</p><p> </p><p>“I know, my darling,” said Mrs Ilisabek Carnahan, an intelligent and thoughtful parent who had taken great care over her unusual daughter’s education. “But not everyone is so scholarly as you.”  </p><p> </p><p>“He said he would be interested in anything I wanted to talk about, Mamma.”</p><p> </p><p>Ilisabek might with justice have reflected that not everyone was so literal-minded as Evy, either. “I’m afraid he expected you to be interested in - Oh, flowers, and parties, and things of that nature.”</p><p> </p><p>“I like flowers and parties,” Evy said sadly. She had plenty of friends her own age; she had attended an excellent girls’ day school which prized strong academics, and Evy herself was full of charm. If her school friends occasionally begged her to put away her books and come out walking, they at least didn’t stigmatise her as a bluestocking. “But burial amulets are just as fascinating, and I was reading Professor Emerson’s paper, and I thought -”</p><p> </p><p>“I know,” Ilisabek said, and kissed the top of her daughter’s curly head. </p><p> </p><p>“There is nothing for it! I shall have to go to university to find men worth talking to.”</p><p> </p><p>“Go because it interests you, my love,” Ilisabek advised. “Men are perfectly capable of being ninnyhammers anywhere in this wide world.”</p><p> </p><p>Evy giggled, but she found it to be true, too. The Bembridge Scholars were just the last in a long line of insults. Nothing more than the latest roomful of men whose eyes dwelled appreciatively on her face - provided she wasn’t wearing reading glasses - and then glazed over once she began to talk, or became indignant when she contradicted them.</p><p> </p><p>Evy contradicted them <em>frequently</em>.</p><p> </p><p>“They might like you better if you didn’t tell them they were wrong all the time,” Jonathan suggested.</p><p> </p><p>“But they <em>are</em> wrong,” Evy said with pointed sweetness. “All the time, in fact.”</p><p> </p><p>Jonathan eyed her like a dangerous weapon left unattended. “Right,” he said, and began to talk loudly and cheerfully about something quite different.</p><p> </p><p>Evy took a post as librarian at the museum in Cairo. She did it because nobody ever looked after that place and it was in an awful state of disrepair, and because she needed something to do while Jonathan racketed around drinking, excavating, and making off with other people’s property. Most of all she did it because all the clever girls who had listened to her sentences from beginning to end had started families or gone off to do some kind of good work, or - in one case - become a fearfully brilliant chemist with fewer fingers than she’d had at school, and none of them lived in Cairo. For the first time in her life, Evy felt quite friendless and in need of occupation. And regrettably, at the museum, surrounded by men more concerned with the neatness of her handwriting than her qualifications for the role.</p><p> </p><p>Evy had excellent handwriting. That was beside the point.</p><p> </p><p>She carried on at the library, in the hopes of hearing of some better role she might fill, until the day she knocked over several poorly-secured bookshelves and was invited not to return. She went back home feeling quite low and sad, and not at all in the mood to listen to Jonathan about Hamunaptra; but then he dragged her to a prison to talk to a man about an ancient city of gold, and Evy - without meaning to in the slightest - found herself interested.</p><p> </p><p>Rick O’Connell had horrible manners, a criminal past, and - at least until he cleaned himself up - vile personal hygiene. He threw Evy into a river, which might have been full of crocodiles for all he knew, kissed her when she had not the remotest intention of kissing him, and yanked her around as if her safety was more important than her notes, which it wasn’t. But he never let her down or walked away, even when he might easily have done so, and even when Evy herself would have loved to leave Jonathan to the mercies of the nearest crocodile. He treated her as the head of the expedition without question or hesitation. He followed her orders, which no-one had ever done before. And even if he had slight thieving tendencies, like Jonathan, <em>unlike</em> Jonathan he stole <em>useful</em> things such as a roll of tools even better than the ones she’d lost on the boat.</p><p> </p><p>But the thing that really stuck in Evy’s mind was the way he listened. He looked her in the eye while she told him about embalming dead bodies from the nose down, and smiled at her enthusiasm. He took the bottle away from her and gave her tea instead and asked her to tell him more.</p><p> </p><p>“Really?” Evy demanded, caught off guard. “I mean, I think the preservation of viscera in canopic jars is -“</p><p> </p><p>“- Interesting,” Rick said, smiling. “It’s interesting. I never heard that much about how they made those old mummies.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” Evy breathed, and for a second, the world stopped. And then she blinked. “Well. If you’re interested.”</p><p> </p><p>She talked until her tea grew cold, and Jonathan began to snore. “It’s late,” she said mournfully. “I should sleep.”</p><p> </p><p>“No harm in that,” Rick said. Ungentlemanly or not, he had a lovely smile. “Tell me more tomorrow.”</p><p> </p><p>“I <em>shall</em>,” Evy said, with glee.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>